2. Yoko Taguchi (Hitotsubashi University)

Summary：

1. Kanako Nakagawa

This study analyzed shifts in a women’s intimate zone of meat shop owners in Katmandu, Nepal. Specific examination was made of women of the Khadgi caste, who have historically engaged in slaughtering, processing, and trading livestock in a caste-based role, and who in many cases, work as mistresses in their meat shops. This report specifically describes shifts in their intimate zone and its effect of Khadgi’s caste recognition during the most recent three decades. After democratization in 1990, the population of Kathmandu expanded rapidly. Shopping areas have formed around the city periphery. Women from the Khadgi caste started to rent their residences as tenants and work as mistresses in the bazaar. During lunchtime, when the meat shop is closed, they mutually gather and chat. Thereby, they formed intimate networks of meat shop mistresses. In the 2000s, as a sub-organization of their caste association, Khadgi women formed a women’s association and subsequently organized numerous programs such as income generation and accounting.
By examining the shifts, this study elucidates the role of women’s networks in reconstructing the recognition of their caste. Caste recognition is usually regarded as an example of identity politics, centering on public meetings and agitations by caste associations in public sphere. By contrast, the author demonstrates how women’s networks have broadened the horizons of caste recognitions themselves, by bringing in activities related to family businesses and by income generation.

2. Yoko Taguchi

In this paper, I discussed the division of domestic work as well as the creative maintenance of the household by focusing on the case of one Mumbai family. Drawing on the literature both on changing social imaginaries in the era of globalization (including frictions of the moral economy accompanying international movements of domestic workers and subsequent changes in global householding) and on classic anthropological studies of Indian kinship and personhood (including caste-based division of labor and transactions of substance-codes), I explored the dynamics of family and household in contemporary India.
Middle-class families in urban India commonly employ a few maids for housework and childcare. The complex division of housework continues in various forms, even though the more traditional caste-based division of labor has apparently loosened. For example, in Mumbai today, it is not unusual to hire maids from abroad or other regions without knowing the details of their castes, and available maids are often simply introduced by the building’s watchmen. Similarly, live-in and full-time arrangements have been partly replaced by part-timers, who presumably have more freedom and control over their own lives. The social imaginary regarding the relationship of employers and domestic workers oscillates between hierarchical and patriarchal bonds and more temporary and commercial relations. In this way, the logic of family and attachment and the logic of the market and efficiency are more entangled in contemporary domestic arrangements. Based on my preliminary fieldwork in Mumbai, I described how family and non-family are connected and how personhood is extended in the contingent and somewhat intimate sphere of the household.

Workshop Report

MINDAS 2017 the Study Group on Music and Performing Arts, the 1st Workshop
“String instruments of South Asia: Historical Connections and Contemporary Applications”

7. Shota Fukuoka (National
Museum of Ethnology)

Summary：

1. Yoshitaka Terada

South Asia constitutes a treasure trove of string instruments, which are highly diverse in their physical construction, music style, performance context, status of performer, and cultural significance. The wide diversity of the instruments reflects a multitude of ethnicities, religions and cultures within the region, but it is also a result of the complex interplay between South Asia and its surrounding regions over a long period of time. As generally believed, South Asia played a decisive role in the migration of instruments in Eurasia because numerous string instruments exist in West, Central, Southeast, and East Asia, which resemble those in South Asia.
The migration of musical instruments across wide areas of the world was a main concern in comparative musicology until the 1960s, when it was replaced by ethnomusicology, with its greater emphasis on ethnographic detail in a limited locality. Accordingly, despite the importance of South Asia as a crossroads of musical instruments, the historical connection between musical instruments across wide geographical areas has not come to be a major topic of inquiry in ethnomusicology.
The objectives of this two-day meeting were to assess the present state of knowledge related to the historical trajectory of some major string instruments in South Asia down to their contemporary applications. On the first day, presentations were given on the three major types of South Asian instruments (sitar, sarod, and vina), although presentations on the second day specifically emphasized instruments from surrounding regions, including Persian santur, Turkish bağlama, and Indonesian rabab. The meeting was successful: individual research interests were placed in a larger historical context; moreover, many potential areas of investigations were identified during the course of discussion.

2. Hidetoshi Kobinata

This paper explores the historical changes of sitār hardware from the second half of the 19th century to the present, using iconographic materials, a handbook for sitār, Sitār Darpan (1914) as well as several art works depicting this musical instrument. Generally, sitārs are classified into two types: sādā (plain) and tarafdār (with sympathetic strings). Most modern sitārs are of the latter type, excluding cheap ones or toys. Those of the former type were played widely before the 1940s. An interesting photographic image of a sitār shows young Pt. Ravi Shankar (age 10 or so) playing the sādā type in Paris as a member of the Uday Shankar Ballet Troupe. After two decades, however, in 1949 when he played the sitār in a radio program as a professional musician, he played the tarafdār type, as shown in his photographic document. "Virtual art galleries" are also useful for organology based on iconographic materials. A sitār in the collection "Musical Instruments Donated by Raja Sir Sourindro Mohun Tagore (Indian Museum, Kolkata)" confirms that the sādā type was commonly used during his lifetime between 1840 and 1914. These photographic images also tell us that the number of frets on the sādā type was limited to 16 or fewer, compared to 20 for a modern sitār. The features of these early models are apparent also in the figures and playing instructions found in Sitār Darpan. The method used for this paper might be applied further to older hardware of this instrument when tracing back the origin of the sitār.

3. Masakazu Tamori

The sarod is an important stringed instrument along with the sitar in Hindustani music or North Indian classical music. The historical and ethnomusicological study of the sarod has very wide implications in consideration of its precursors and the interaction between the musical culture of different regions and peoples. An effort is underway to ascertain its origin in the ancient Indian lute like Chitra-vina, but the most convincing theory is that the sarod is a gradually developed form of the rabab of the Central Asia or Afghanistan during the later Mughal period. Actually, many common points exist in the form and structure between the sarod and the Kabuli-rabab. The most important improvement from the Kabuli-rabab is that the sarod was covered a metal fingerboard and that the gut strings were replaced by metal wires. It follows that the sarod can produce the continuous slides between notes known as mīnd, which are important in Hindustani music. Then, who remodeled the rabab into the sarod under what kind of environment, when and where? This presentation is an attempt to reconsider these points by analyzing the historical materials in Mughal period and an oral history of the Pathan rabābiyā/sarodiyā who came from Afghanistan and established the sarod gharānā (school) in Hindustani music.

4. Yoshitaka Terada

The Sanskrit term vina has been applied to diverse string instruments throughout South Asia, some of which are prominent in the classical music of both northern and southern North and South India today. The vina refers to plucked zithers with two large gourd resonators (rudra vina and vichitra veena) in northern North India, although it means the long-necked lutes with a single resonator (saraswati vina and gottuvattiyam/chitra vina) in southern India. This presentation outlines the development of the instruments with a common appellation. Based literally on textual, iconographical and pictorial sources, scholars generally agree that the rudra vina, a result of long evolution from ektantri (one-string unfretted zither) and kinnari vina> (fretted zither with more strings), reached its modern form during the Mughal period.
The history of the southern Indian saraswati vina>, the most popular of all vinas today, is more problematic. Presumably, it acquired its present form in the 17th century in Tanjavur, but the predecessor of this instrument has not been identified. Moreover, the historical connection between the zither-type vina and lute-typevina remains unresolved. Compared to the vinas with frets, those without them are of more recent origin and have known inventors. Vichitra vina was named only after 1920, although gottuvattiyam (chitra vina) was invented around 1900.
In recent decades, vina of a few newer types have been invented. In northern North India, the guitar with sympathetic strings was developed and named mohan vina, after the name of the guitarist who invented it. In southern South India, electric and portable vinas> have been created to aid traveling musicians. Although vina enjoy high status among instruments, much of the associated history remains enigmatic. A closer examination of historical sources is fundamentally necessary. For the saraswati vina particularly, a comprehensive examination of both Tamil literal sources and iconographical evidence is in order.

5. Masato Tani

This presentation describes some differences between Iranian Santur and Indian Santoor from their ways of playing and the tuning system. Santur is the hammered dulcimer-type musical instrument with strings over a trapezoidal sound box. It is played with a mallet in each hand. Dulcimers on which strings are struck with mallets are ubiquitous throughout the Orient.
Both in Iranian and Hindustani music, the phraseology characteristic of vocal music has been regarded traditionally as a universal language that all musicians should master. A distinct difference between Iranian Santur and Indian Santoor is that in Iranian Santur, a tremolo, which is the reflection of vocal music, is played with both hands, whereas in Indian one, it is played with one hand only. This unique mode of playing is said to have been created by Pandit Shivkumar Sharma. He renovated traditional Kashimir santoor on both a hardware and software basis and incorporated it into Hindustani classical music.
As for the tuning system, in Iran, for some years past, new tuning systems called “Ravan kuk” “Santur 7 dastgah” were invented and introduced, whereas, in India, nothing new has been introduced. “Santur 7 dastgah” which means “Santur with seven different modes” is the mechanical system that makes it possible to change the key (the length of the strings) in a few seconds. “Ravan kuk,” which literally means “fluent tuning,” is a completely new tuning pin using a “tuning screw in pin” system instead of traditional “tuning pin in wooden body” system. This new tuning pin makes tuning easier and more stable.

6. Tomoko Yoneyama

This presentation briefly describes the historical transition of the main stringed musical instruments used by Turkish people in Central Asia. It then especially describes the historical transition and modern development of stringed musical instrument called the Saz in the Republic of Turkey. Central Asian Turkish has used stringed musical instruments such as the copuz, the dutar, the komuz, the dombra, the tambour, and the rubab. They have been played by minstrels once and are now also used for popular music.
The Saz in the Republic of Turkey originated from the copuz of Central Asia and was also played by minstrels called Ozan and Asik. The Saz has been used as an instrument for folk music accompaniment in Turkey. The name differs depending on the size. It takes three months to produce one using traditional production methods. After founding of the republic, it was to be used as the original musical instrument of Turkey. Today, it is also known as a national musical instrument in Turkey because it represents regional characteristics and because it can be played simultaneously with various Turkish music genres such as popular music and Arabesk.

7. Shota Fukuoka

Evidence from iconographical, archaeological, and literary sources indicates that musical instruments of various types were introduced from India to Southeast Asia. Some studies of comparative musicology during the first half of the 20th century engaged in detailed documentation of instruments used in a certain area. Such studies were intended to classify them according to their presumed origins. An extended study of instruments in Celebes (Sulawesi) by Walter Kaudern (Musical instruments in Celebes, 1927) is reviewed in the first part of the present work. Detailed descriptions of the instruments of the island still have value for us as historical documentation, but the reasons for the inference of their origins are ambiguous in some cases. That is true because the reconstruction of genealogies depends on comparative studies of their shape, construction, and names because the respective histories of instruments had been rarely documented. In the second part, bar-zithers on the reliefs of historical architecture including Borobudur were examined based on the book Hindu–Javanese Musical Instruments by Jaap Kunst (2nd enlarged ed., 1968). Bar-zithers were popular instruments carved on them, but they seem to be extinct in Java, in contrast to Thailand and Cambodia, where this type of instrument is still used. In the last part, the author describes an examination of lutes named kecapi or related ones: hasapi (Indonesia),kudyapi (the Philippines), krajappi (Thailand), chapey (Cambodia), etc. The names are said to derive from the Indian kacchapi-vina or kacchapa, a Sanskrit name for the tree cedrela toona.

3. Kaoru Kawanaka (Kyoto University)

Summary：

1. Yoko Ueba

Textiles, including yarns and fabrics, have been important goods for trading since ancient times. Since the Age of Exploration, South Asian textiles have influenced textiles worldwide. Around the world, handicrafts are disappearing or are in danger of extinction. In South Asia, however, handcrafted textiles continue to be made and to exert a continuing impact on textiles worldwide.
Textile products are not confined to practical use as clothing. Textiles are used as emblems to express identity and authority. Indeed, they sometimes function as currency. They can, in other words, play important social, economic, political, and religious roles. In the world of fashion, Indian textiles embody rare materials and fascinating techniques and patterns rooted in Indian culture. They are used in clothing that is closely connected to society and religion.
The “Textile in South Asia” unit, based on fieldwork in regions where South Asian textiles are produced, social and cultural anthropologists and ethnologists will present cases illustrating these trends, with consideration of the characteristic of textile in South Asia.

2. Chie Fukuuchi

This presentation explored “dressed prints” or print-works embellished with cloth, which evolved during the first half of 20th century India. Such dressed prints have various names that include “cloth work photos” and “Burma prints” in today’s art and antiques markets. Although less well studied, these dressed prints seem to have made a remarkable sight from the viewpoint of global art history.
Tracing historical documents and image information of private collections related to “dressed prints” revealed that Bombay-based agents of Ravi Varma Press such as “Anant Shiwaji Desai” and “The Ravi Varma Picture Depot” were in charge of the production of the dressed prints. They distributed the prints to southern India through local dealers in Madras and Madurai during the first half of the 20th century. These findings led our attention to the “Chettiar Community,” a mercantile community in South India that used to work away from home and used to engage in the lively business activities prevailing in Southeast Asia including British Burma. Preliminary research of their homeland Chettinad revealed existence of the dressed prints hanging on the room-walls of mansion houses, mostly built in the early 20th century, in today’s India. Most of these prints are the production of Ravi Varma Press. In the discussion section, I described the relevance of “Ravi Varma Press,” “dressed prints,” “Chettiar Community,” and “Burma prints,” with the suggestion that “dressed prints,” in terms of the spirit and substance of cloth, show the prestige of the bride’s carry-on goods (sir danam) in the Chettiar Community custom.

3. Kaoru Kawanaka

This study examines the relation between local technology formation of tailors and textile materials within the apparel export industry in Delhi, India. Tailors in Delhi are reported to be in an unsettled labour condition that is exacerbated by industrial policies and trade liberalization, leading to the informalisation of the labour force in India. Nevertheless, export production requires skilled human resources, especially for the tailoring process, to create value-added apparel products with unique Indian textiles. How can we interpret the gap separating migrant tailors and export products with value added? Using textile material data of export apparel firms obtained from field work, this study assesses processes of migration-embedded local skill formation among tailors based on interpersonal relationships.

Workshop Report

MINDAS 2017 the First Joint Workshop
“State and Religion in South Asia”

4. Mari Miyamoto (Keio University)

5. Sou Yamane (Osaka University)

Summary：

1. Minoru Mio

In South Asia, religious communities have historically coexisted with populations of tens to hundreds of millions, including Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians. Moreover, these communities have served important roles in various aspects of each state, including politics, economy, society, and culture. Nevertheless, in 21st-century South Asian countries, circumstances have arisen that have come to threaten the right to live and the freedom of speech of numerically minor religious communities.
As one example, Indian-style secularism by which the state equally respects religious communities and gives consideration to minor religious groups has been advocated since India’s independence. Nevertheless, a political party with executive members who consider individuals of minority groups, such as Muslims and Christians as “second-class citizens” and which professes the opinion that they should obey the wishes of Hindus, who constitute a majority, has recently gained dominance in Parliament and in several State Assemblies. They oppress minorities by various means, such as prohibition or restriction of minor religions’ missionary work and residential segregation among members of different religions. In Pakistan, although Islam has become the political mainstream since the 1980s, confrontations between different Islamic schools are entangled with confrontations among regions and tribes. Sometimes sectarian confrontation engenders violent confrontation. In Nepal, although secularism is declared in the new constitution, certain social movements since the time of royal rule have championed the goal of returning to a “Hindu” state.
Apparently, each South Asian country has followed a different historical trajectory, but all have come to confront situations in which the religious majority holds hegemony in a state, situates its own religion as the state religion (or de facto state religion), and increasingly marginalizes the religious minority. Both majority suppression and minority resistance sometimes entail intense violence. Such a trend is influenced strongly by the globalization of terrorism, by international trends to label resistance groups one-sidedly as terrorists, and by suppression of the groups.
In this seminar, four manuscripts, presenting four (India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bhutan) countries’ situations, were given to illustrate how state and various religious agencies and groups have interacted to shape the “public/private” “secular/religious” sphere since the 20th century. In the general discussion, these four countries’ trajectories were compared. Participants reconsidered the features of the state-religion relationship in contemporary South Asia and discussed the desired future of peaceful co-existence among different religious communities and the state’s (and other agencies’) role for this future.

2. Aya Ikegame

In recent years, several Hindu religious leaders have emerged as influential actors in the increasingly polarising political environment of India. The most populous state of Uttar Pradesh has chosen a head of a monastery as its chief minister, for example. This apparently closing gap between religion and politics gives the impression that secularism in India is facing a grave crisis, again. The relationship between religious leaders and the state, though, cannot be fully understood within the argument of constitutional secularism. In rural south India, many monasteries (mathas) have been engaging in a variety of forms of social work (education, health and social justice) in the region since the early twentieth century. In this context, monasteries seem to have been acting like a state, providing necessary provisions to the people. They could be regarded as a parallel state that operates independently from the nation state. Deep investigation though reveals that the relationship between the monasteries and the state is overlapping and mutually dependent. By looking at two state-led-development projects (a large scale lift irrigation project, and online crop compensation scheme both funded and implemented by the regional state government), it becomes clear that without the timely intervention of locally powerful religious leaders, these projects would have remained only on paper. The paper thus argues that renouncer-gurus are acquiring a new role as the 'ultimate intermediary' who pushes the modern developmental agenda of the state for the public. The uncertainty of accountability, transparency and legitimacy of religious authority in such interventions undermines the ideals of modern state formation in which only elected representatives of the people can assume such authority. However, some gurus who act as the ultimate intermediary seem to force the state to be more responsive to the demands of the public. In this exercise, the relationship between the state and guru is neither what modern secular ideals uphold or denounce, but the guru ironically emerges as saviour of democracy.

3. Mitsuru Niwa

The aim of this paper is to outline and discuss the historical change in relations between the state and religion(s) in Nepal, with specific examination of Protestantism. Christianity has long been a target of legally endorsed persecution in Nepal because Hinduism, as Nepal's national religion, had been at the core of national unity, integrity, and identity. However, the success of 1990 Democracy Movement achieved relative freedom for various religion(s), including Protestantism. As a result, Hinduism gradually started to lose its dominance. Moreover, the success of 2006 Democracy Movement brought secularism into Nepal. Therefore, Hinduism legally lost its status as Nepal's national religion. Under those circumstances, religious minorities have started to enjoy religious freedom, but, as a reaction, some Hindus started to show apparent hostility and enmity, which sometimes produces violence against religious minorities nowadays, especially against Protestants. In contemporary Nepal, so-called 'religious communalism' is certainly said to be an important and crucially important national issue. In addition to the points raised above, this paper introduces opinions of a politician and a Protestant intellectual who warn of the dangers of religious communalism that has its origin in secularization of Nepal to be radicalized in the near future. Therefore, they demand that secularization be repealed.

4. Mari Miyamoto

In Bhutan, the Buddhist organization has long maintained a say in the public political realm, but the place of religion was not secured when the new election act and Constitution were approved upon democratization in 2008. They were required to restrict their influence to religious and cultural areas. As secularization of the political sphere advances, Buddhist monasteries become ever more influential to the society and the living world of people, irrespective of whether they are state monasteries, or not. It is apparent especially through the expansion of Buddhist practice of releasing of living things kept in captivity called tsethar and the spread of excessive repulsion against slaughter of cattle within the country. In the presentation, the spread of religious practices after democratization was described through the process of the organization of tsethar practiced in society. Furthermore, the possibility of re-politicization of "religion" through recent public discussion over the construction of abattoirs and people’s practices of meat consumption are discussed.

5. Sou Yamane

This presentation outlines a discussion of how arguments have been raised about the religious legitimacy of the nation state of Pakistan. Although Pakistan became independent in 1947 as a Muslim majority state, political leaders such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah intended to establish a secular Muslim state at the time of independence. Some other religious leaders sought to establish the Islamic state on religious discipline. Since then, debates have arisen between the rather secular political leaders and religious leaders or ulama about what kind of state Pakistan should be. In the multi-ethnic state of Pakistan, Islam has functioned as the bonding force for the nation. However, at the level of law and administration, secularism has been maintained with consistency. The Pakistani government has occasionally propitiated Islamists. Legally modern representative democracy was provided assurance in the framework of Islam. Arguments about religious legitimacy were reflected deeply by domestic and international relations. Pakistan received huge political and financial support from the international community during the jihad against the Soviet Union in the 1980s and anti-terror war in 2000s. Such an atmosphere supported Islamization in Pakistan. People in Pakistan have therefore fallen into a dilemma. Although they do have sympathy for other Muslims fighting for jihad, they are compelled to follow political influences exerted by non-Muslim states such as the USA. This dilemma is highlighted by the tendency by which people cannot criticize those who assert jihad.
However, in January 2015, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on a public school in Peshawar, the Pakistani government amended the Constitution to wipe out and eradicate terrorists from the country and set up a military court against the terrorists acting in the name of religion. Although Pakistan received greater assistance during the war, after the assassination of Usama bin-Laden in 2011, the international community has devoted less attention to Pakistan. Nevertheless, the 21st amendment to wipe out extremism from the country was executed with no reference of international community support. As Pakistan continues to confront difficulties attributable to religious extremism, the international community must devote greater attention to regional stability.

Workshop Report

MINDAS 2017 the Study Group on Intimate Spheres, the 1st Workshop
“Intimate spheres and Social transformation in South Asia”

2. Misako Kanno (National Institutes for the Humanities/ Center for South Asian Studies at The National Museum of Ethnology)

3. Mizuho Matsuo (National Museum of Ethnology

Summary：

1. Mizuho Matsuo

The “Intimate spheres and Social transformation in South Asia” unit examines the changing phenomenon of intimate spheres in South Asia. Intimate spheres here include wider social as well as personal networks of family, kinship, neighbourhood, and friendship, in which a person belongs and into which a person is related.
When one speaks about the basic concept of intimate spheres in South Asia, studies of kinship and family structures such as traditional extended family systems, marriage alliances, personhood, and substance-codes, are those which are mainly discussed. However, social transformation led by globalization and economic growth has strongly influenced not only the public sphere, but also intimate spheres across South Asia. Norms and practices of traditional family and gender, or what is regarded as traditional, are fluctuating as people strive to progress to new situations while coping with uncertainty. Furthermore, their life experiences are influenced profoundly by regional variations, by urban–rural dichotomies, by age and generation, by class and caste, by education, by employment and work experiences, by family composition, and by other factors. Keeping a close eye on contemporary developments and transformations, this unit was designed to explore diverse features of relatedness and belonging and people’s lived experiences in contemporary South Asian society.

The issues of interests are explained below, although the issues are not limited to them.
Gender and family: changing roles and behaviours of gender in family, such as outsourcing of care for children and senior parents, separation of family households, modes of new household management and chores, and education of children.
New forms of relatedness: recent changes in relatedness such as family creation through new reproductive technologies (NRTs) and adoption (not like traditional practices of adoption within kin groups), practices of inter-caste, inter-religion and inter-cultural (interracial) marriages, and changing relations with neighbours and domestic servants.

2. Misako Kanno

This presentation raised the fundamentally important question of “What is the meaning of household chores (ghar ka kam) in women’s lives?” while analyzing narratives of women in rural North India. The targeted informants were women in their 40s to 70s from different caste groups such as Brahman, Thakur, Bind, and Chamar in rural communities of eastern Uttar Pradesh. These women are engaged in numerous chores every day, including not only cooking, cleaning, washing, and rearing children but also farming, cattle breeding, making cow-dung fuel, repairing mud house walls, preparing foods such as pickles and dried vegetables for storage, and even worship and preparation for annual ceremonies and rituals. These drudgeries frequently cause women pain and fatigue. Women occasionally complain about their own lives with painful and exhausting roles on one hand, but they also accept life as it is while lamenting that they are directed by karma, kismet, and naseeb, all of which mean fate and fortune, on the other. Furthermore, they do not do the work merely reluctantly for their survival. They attempt to construct and strengthen relationships with specific others in their intimate spheres such as family, kin, and neighbors in their communities. They assert their presence and values among them through coping with chores. Therefore, this presentation demonstrated that women’s daily routine can be regarded as a device for women to assert their identity in a relationship with others and to situate themselves in the most comfortable space in their respective living spheres.

3. Mizuho Matsuo

This presentation describes the meaning of the public world and its experiences for high-caste senior women, particularly addressing Chitpavan Brahmin living in Maharashtra and Karnataka. The Chitpavan Brahmin sub-group is spread throughout Maharashtra, Goa, and Karnataka. Its members achieved upward social status after 1713, when Bajirao Balaji Bhat became the Peshwa (prime minister) of the Maratha kingdom. They occupied important social positions in these regions and produced numerous outstanding figures in political, social, and cultural fields during the 19th to 20th century. Although they held privileged social status until the mid-20th century, their social positions were gradually threatened because of anti-Brahmin movements and social uplifting of other groups. Subsequent land reform policies (Kul Kayda), which made tenants land owners, dealt a heavy blow to these communities. Many absentee landlord families lost their lands during that era.
This presentation specifically explains the experience of older women (60–80 years; mean age 67.5 years) residing in Pune, Mumbai, and Bangalore. They were influenced directly by social reform movements, led by their fathers’ generation, which promoted girls’ education. Considering their age and gender, they are exceptionally well-educated: most interviewees are college graduates. The prominent public world they encountered included schooling experience at a young age. Their next encounter with the public world for them included work experiences. Most had secure jobs as government employees, bank employees, teachers, and doctors, which were regarded as “appropriate” jobs for them. Most of them were the first generation to work outside of their families as women. This study examined their school and work experiences, but also the family structures which enabled them to have such experiences, as well as current changes affecting their daughters’ or daughters-in-laws’ generations to assess social transformations affecting particular social groups in the post-independence era.

Workshop Report

MINDAS 2016 the Fourth Joint Workshop
“Pattern and Intellectual Property – From the Front Lines of Textile Production in India”

Date：

Saturday, 4th February 2017. 13:00-19:00

Venue：

National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka

Textiles, including yarns and fabrics, have been important goods for trading since ancient times. Since the Age of Exploration, South Asian textiles have influenced textiles worldwide. Around the world, handicrafts are disappearing or are in danger of extinction. In South Asia, however, handcrafted textiles continue to be made and to exert a continuing impact on textiles worldwide.
Textile products are not confined to practical use as clothing. Textiles are used as emblems to express identity and authority. Indeed, they sometimes function as currency. They can, in other words, play important social, economic, political, and religious roles. In the world of fashion, Indian textiles embody rare materials and fascinating techniques and patterns rooted in Indian culture. They are used in clothing that is closely connected to society and religion. In many cases, they are easily commodified, which raises the issue of the extent to which the essence of locally produced textiles can be abstracted. Textile products spread patterns far and wide. Superficially distinctive, these patterns are easily copied, allowing “Indian style” products to flood global markets.
At this symposium, based on fieldwork in regions where Indian textiles are produced, social and cultural anthropologists and ethnologists will present cases illustrating these trends, with consideration of the relation between imitation of traditional patterns and issues of intellectual property.

Summary：

Yoko Ueba

"Rabari Embroidery and Dress – Use of Design in Other Applications"

This presentation specifically emphasizes the uses of textiles among the Rabari in the Kutch district of Gujarat state, with clarification of the use of textiles as status symbols and examination of the imitation of patterns from this perspective.
I have indicated two events as drivers of major changes in Rabari society: the legal prohibition of embroidery and the great earthquake in western India. I have also analyzed the effects of changes on Rabari dress and how Rabari dress is decorated.
From these events, Rabari textiles have come to include those that imitate traditional patterns, produced by textile guilds of artisans specializing in weaving and dyeing. Because these textiles are created by expert artisans using expensive materials, they are regarded as precious by Rabari society. However, these events also brought a large inrush into the market of inexpensive, mass-produced cotton and synthetic fiber printed textiles that imitate traditional patterns. These printed textiles spread rapidly through Rabari society, replacing the textile products that were used previously.
In the Indian social context, which assigns a clear status to the motifs applied to textiles, these mass-produced textiles do not accurately resemble patterns found in Rabari women’s embroidery. Textile design (form, pattern, and color) is a visual marker of social status. One can readily imagine that the original fabrics are copied, but mass-produced printed textiles only superficially resemble traditional designs. Consequently, in Rabari society, little attention is devoted to such questions of whether they are made of natural or synthetic materials or hand or machine made. Design remains the most important characteristic of these copies.

2. Miwa Kanetani

"Woodblock Printed Textile Connected with Copy Technique"

This presentation describes the issue of property rights to specific patterns of handmade textiles in Gujarat, India. Using a hand woodblock printing technique, this textile, Ajrakh, has been produced by the Muslim artisan caste, Khatri, for garments of local pastoral people for four hundred years. Today, Ajrakh producers are preparing for Geographical Identification (GI) registration to prevent others from taking intellectual property rights of Ajrakh. The issue began after a natural calamity struck this area.
Artisans who were adversely affected by the earthquake of 2001 and who thereby lost their livelihood constructed a new village to shift their block printing industry. They named Ajrakh as their new village. Ajrakh became famous by seizing this opportunity of post-disaster development. However, as it became famous, copied products of Ajrakh are made by screen printing and machine printing with chemical dye circulated throughout the area. Producers of Ajrakh started to call their own products “Real Ajrakh”, and labeled copied products of Ajrakh as “No Real Ajrakh” or “Copy Ajrakh”.
Nevertheless, clearly identifying which is real and which is not real has become difficult because the hand woodblock printing technique was presumably invented to repeat the specific pattern many times. In fact, machine printing was developed based on Indian woodblock printing in Europe. For that reason, woodblock printing are connected with copying techniques. The background of the property rights controversy of Ajrakh is fundamentally related to its technique.

Workshop Report

MINDAS 2016 the Third Joint Workshop
“Performing arts and marginalized communities in South Asia”

3. Emi Okada

Summary：

1. Yoshitaka Terada

Ethnomusicological study of South Asian performing arts has targeted classical traditions of music and dance as primary subjects of research. Although the generated body of scholarship has contributed greatly to the understanding of music as culture, revealing unexplored aspects of classical performing arts such as context-based performance practice, social organization of musicians and patrons, and transmission of knowledge, it has nevertheless left a vast field of non-classical traditions that are under-represented in scholarship. Based on this premise, the current session was aimed at providing a venue for scholars who are exploring marginalized groups in performing arts for interaction. A film on Dalit drumming from Tamil Nadu, This is Music: Reclaiming an Untouchable Drum, was first screened to set a tone for discussion. The film’s director, Zoe Sherinian, is a staunch critic of Western scholarship predicated on classical traditions and is an advocate of engaged/activist ethnomusicology. The screening was followed by a commentary by Kurokawa Taeko (International Center for Literacy and Culture), who wrote a doctoral dissertation on the topic in 2002. After a break, two contrasting case studies from Nepal and Nagaland, India were reported respectively by Imai Fumiko and Okada Emi (see below). Finally, the general discussion began with comments by Murayama Kazuyuki (Wako University). Among the issues discussed were the relevance of the concept of activist ethnomusicology in South Asian studies, the positioning of researchers in the study of music and marginalized communities, and the roles of audiovisual media in such studies.

2. Fumiko Imai

The occupation of Gandharba (Gaine), a lower occupational caste in Nepal, is singing while traveling from village to village. They use a fiddle-like instrument called sārangi, their only occupational tool for living. Because of their occupational features, Gandharba are often regarded as a musician caste, especially by foreign researchers whose works have examined Gandharba’s musical aspects. However, “music” does not fully capture the complex features of their performances. Video clips of Gandharba performances recorded during the author’s fieldwork in 2006 exhibit that Gandharba performances are in fact dynamic and variable, depending on various audience groups and circumstances. This report describes the current circumstances related to the Gandharba people and sārangis, particularly addressing how their performances are used through the process of promoting the national music of Nepal. From the late twentieth century, in an attempt to exclude the influence of foreign music and to reinforce the sense of national identity, Radio Nepal, a state-run radio station established in 1951, had broadcasted variations of traditional folk songs from different villages. After one Gandharba person was recruited as an artist at the Radio in the mid-1960s, the sārangi instrument has enhanced presence in the field of Nepalese music. Nevertheless, although sārangi has been widely accepted, little change has occurred in terms of the status and social situations of most Gandharba people. What the historical changes around sārangi brought about, in the author’s view, is that images associated with sārangi are divisible into the following two: a national musical instrument on one hand, and the low-caste Gandharba’s own tool on the other.

3. Emi Okada

In Nagaland, a state in India near the Indo-Myanmar border, over 84% of the area’s people are Nagas [Census 2011], an aggregation of several ethnic minorities of Indo-mongoloid origin authorized by the Indian government as a Scheduled Tribe. The long struggle for Naga independence from India based on the issue of their separateness has placed Naga society at a socioeconomic disadvantage. Moreover, it has isolated and differentiated them from mainstream culture in India. From acceleration of globalization occurring after the late 90s, not only have Nagas accepted western popular music and K-pop. They have also started to assert their own musical origins and identity and to change musical media and market circulation, with connection to a cultural policy for popular music and young musicians. Actually, that policy is supported and promoted by the Music Task Force of Nagaland state government. These circumstances have brought about the popularization of folk songs handed down from generation to generation by Naga ethnic groups in the context of Naga pop culture and connection with recent developments in the Nagaland music industry.

Summary：

1. Makito Minami

In the second joint seminar of MINDAS, we addressed aspects of social and physical mobility of people in Nepal under the context of drastic political change of the state during the last few decades. As an introduction, the author first describes salient socio-political changes since the Maoists rebellion in 1996, as well as social inclusion policies adopted as a slogan in the new Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. After examining three recent phenomena (reservation system, social protection: cash transfer, and international labor emigration) that are apparently highly relevant to social inclusion of oppressed and backward people into civil society, results were compared with the functions of the newly introduced reservation system and social protection (earlier study). Results of this study show that remittances by international emigrant laborers reached about 22 per cent of GDP, enabling villagers to enjoy cellular telephones, photovoltaic solar arrays, and other infrastructure. Furthermore, social remittances by emigrant laborers and returnees have been forming social capital of migration networks, migration systems by which a broker residing in a village mediates between a labor agent and applicant, and a renewed “culture of migration.” Although emigrant laborers might be subsumed in the global economy as the bottom level of labor, as well as rapidly increased emigration from Nepal might reflect the results of social exclusion, international labor emigration contributes to social inclusion and poverty reduction to some degree. Acquiring overseas access beyond India for people represents the first step forward to social mobility.

2. Yasuko Fujikura

This presentation explores reconfiguration of the Badi community in Nepal after their association with prostitution became a matter of public policy and community controversies. The Badi, who are treated as Dalit, served in the past as entertainers for small rajas and landlords. They became increasingly dependent on income from women's sex work in the process of migration and urbanization in the 1960s. From the late 1980s, Badi women became identified as "high risk groups" by HIV/AIDS prevention projects. This identification generated various rumors and accusations among local residents, renewing discrimination and disputes related to questions of sex work, children's rights, citizenship, and property rights. In the late 1990s, Badi community residents began to fight against historical discrimination. They demanded legal rights for socially recognized marriage and family life. Because residents saw their community as being in the middle of social transformation, they made a clear distinction between the past and the present. Although they spoke eloquently about social change since the 1990s, little public discussion took place on the history of migration and the formation of new settlements between the 1960s and the 1980s. However, in backyards, women’s private talks illustrated how they made a collective strategy to move from rural villages in the hills to urbanizing towns, sustaining a dense kin network. This presentation addresses marriage norms by examining juxtapositions among individual experiences, family practices, and public debates.

3. Maiko Annen

This presentation describes social changes in Nepal examined from the view of the daily life of a rural woman oriented to education. I first examined the meaning of “good education” and secondly considered the way of thinking and strategy for her son’s education.
The national educational system in Nepal has been arranged since the 1950s. The construction of the educational system, connected with various rural development projects, was intended to provide equal opportunities for basic education of the masses.
The person described herein was a learner of non-formal literacy education classes in my research field village. She desires to help her son get a “good education” and compels him to attend a private school in the city. He moves from place to place to obtain a “good education,” with dependence on relatives. When we consider her life history and household expenses, it is likely that her view of investment for education is reflected in her experiences of pleasure and suffering and in discourses related to development programs. Education is regarded as an opportunity to obtain future success and as a means of social mobility.
I considered those situations in which expectations for education have increased, based on the education system of the last few decades in Nepal.

4. Kanako Nakagawa

This presentation describes examination of the shifts in concepts of value related to buffalo meat brought about by a global market economy and explains how it led to social mobility, especially for a caste system in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.
Specifically examining the Khadgi caste, which has historically engaged in slaughtering, processing, and trading livestock as their caste-ordained role, and which has undergone discrimination as “low caste,” this study describes the meat market formation process and shifts in Khadgi’s strategies on their social movements.
This case study revealed two values of buffalo meat: ‘prasada’, which means sacred food offered to a god or goddess, and as a ‘commodity’ circulated in the market. These two values are intermingled through the everyday life practices of Khadgi. Khadgi negotiates with Muslim brokers and Tibetan farmers in the market to update the local rules and norms related to meat as a ‘commodity’. However, Khadgi continue to sacrifice buffalo in a caste-based role, and distribute the ‘prasada’ to their market counterparts including Muslims and Tibetans. Consequently, the Khadgi’s caste identity is updated gradually, reflecting negotiations in the meat market. In 2008, the caste association of Khadgi decided to leave the governmental Dalit list, and to declare themselves as an ‘Adivasi Janajati (Indigenous Nationality)’ by emphasizing their culture and tradition.
From the floor, scholars and researchers posed questions related to effects of global discourse on public hygiene, and related to caste studies in general, and similarity to other indigenous social movements.

Workshop Report

MINDAS 2016 the first joint workshop
Rethinking Family and Relatedness in South Asia

Summary：

１. Mizuho Matsuo
What are special features of social relations in South Asian society? This workshop was held to discuss the relatedness of individuals and groups such as family, kinship, caste, and religion, and to explore their manifestations in various social contexts, especially emphasizing India. The concept of relatedness here is used to elucidate the performative and constructive relations rather than biological (therefore, natural) kinship, proposed by Janet Carsten in the new kinship study. If one divides the question described above into more detailed questions, they would be the following: How do people create and live the relatedness of family, kinship, community, caste, and wider institutions such as religious and ethnic groups? How does that relatedness give reality for people? How does this reality bring categorical identification and formation? How does it create distinction (cutting of the relatedness) in the society?
When one speaks about the basic nature of relatedness in Indian society, studies of caste and kinship and substance-code are those which are mainly discussed. Kinship in India is regarded as inseparable from caste because of its nature as given according to birth and principles of caste endogamy. It seems certain for any Hindu person that caste and kinship lend primal social relations in associating themselves with someone or something in the first place as well as in their daily lives. Many leading studies of caste and kinship have discussed those anyway regarding either category (descent) or behaviour (marriage rule).
The study of a substance-code is related to the issues of personhood, folk concepts of conception, and criticism against Euro-American ethnocentrism of past kinship studies in anthropology. It has been discussed by Roland Inden, Ralf Nicolas, McKim Marriot, E. Valentine Daniel, and others that substance and code in Indian society are inseparable and that they are constituted as a ‘systematic monism’. The concept of substance-code can provide an interesting perspective for consideration of how a person is regarded as related with certain social relations and groups.
These traditional studies that explore caste and kinship and substance-code surely constitute foundational factors for producing relatedness in Indian society. However, both tend to consider relatedness rather statically and fundamentally. It is insufficient to understand relatedness in contemporary Indian society through those perspectives alone. This panel, consisting of four papers describing girls’ puberty rituals in Odisha to physiological evaluation in ‘civil society’ movements in Mumbai, discussed the lived experiences of relatedness from individuals’ perspectives in contemporary India, which faces rapid transformation of social structure itself.

2. Yumiko Tokita-Tanabe

This study examined how the ritual process related to first menstruation in a village in Odisha led to people constructing and reconstructing their sense of belonging and relatedness to families, extended kin, and neighbourhood groups through sharing and exchange of substances. Particular attention was devoted to the experience of a girl who has menstruated for the first time. A transformation of the body-person of the girl occurs along with changes in the social relationships in which she is embedded.
The presentation included a description of what happens when a girl discovers that she has started menstruating. She runs back to her house, where she is confined behind closed doors for three days. She bathes in a pond on the early morning of the fourth day, accompanied by seven married women whose husbands must be living. Only women and girls are allowed to see her until she has ritually fed young children on the fourth day after her bathing. Men and boys are said to break out in fever or heat boils if they see her before that. The family and relatives of the girl are reminded to think seriously about searching for her prospective marriage partner.
Analysis of the ritual process suggests an explanation of how the occasion of the girl’s first menstruation triggers exchange relations and interactions that transform the social relations of various kinds centring round the girl. Construction and reconstruction of relationships occur based on kinship and community ties as well as inter-caste relations. The presentation also emphasized the importance of the emergence of a community of women representing auspiciousness and fertility, whose members guide the girl during the ritual process. The community of women enables the girl to control the excessive and harmful heat of first menstruation that parallels the dangerous aspect of the goddess’s power. Consequently, the network of relationships is not limited to the human social sphere. It is also a part of the cosmological realm of the goddess.
By way of conclusion, I posed some questions for reassessment of the idea of substance in the analyses of personhood and interpersonal relations in South Asia. Substances can be shared and exchanged by touch, but can they be characterized as transferred by seeing, hearing, or smelling? I also suggested a re-examination of how sharing of space is linked to sharing and exchange of substances.

3. Sumie Nakatani

This study undertook reconsideration of earlier research conducted by myself in the 1990s from the perspective shared in the meeting. The agenda was a discussion of South Asian ways of connecting or assembling people. I emphasized the forms of exchange, which have not changed to date against market-oriented social change.
In the studied village, the exchange of agricultural labour and other means of production such as land, water, seeds, and a tractor remain based on the sharecropping contract. Among marriage transactions, the most popular form is a sister exchange. It is an exchange by which two families exchange their women directly. It is regarded as an age-old system, but as demonstrated in the village, in a certain condition, the ‘traditional’ form has become more popular. In the festival, people exchange joy and satisfaction, i.e., locally called maza. To exchange maza through the annual festival is to confirm village community ties. The kind of festival that is popular in the village has changed from a traditional hierarchical one to a modern egalitarian one, but the exchange of maza remains extremely important.
The question I raised in the presentation is that of why the forms of exchange are persistent, even though the meaning of exchange and the nature of relationships created by the exchange have changed entirely. How could the form of relationship be examined? I compared my findings for Rajasthan with the Micronesian exchange discussed by M. Strathern in her book Gender of Gift to examine the form or idea of the exchange specifically.
Her idealism is suggestive to understand how the exchanges produce items and relations, and how the resultant relation is structured. However, the comparison between the South Asian case and Micronesian one is too challenging. It failed to capture the real picture related to a changing society. In a comment offered by a discussant, how the anthropological research of this kind could contribute to society was asked.

4. Noriko Katsuki

As one presenter, I described the actual status of Parsis in India as below at the MINDAS first meeting in 2016.
The Parsis population in India has been extinguished more rapidly than expected. Nonetheless, their orthodox groups refuse to accept non-Zoroastrians who converted to Zoroastrianism in their community. Furthermore, the orthodox argues that Zoroastrianism is not a universal religion. The orthodox has become anxious that performing the Navjote ceremony confers to a convert a right to enjoy the welfare of the Parsi community. For Parsis, a Navjote ceremony is the Zoroastrianism initiation ritual. However, the Navjote was created as a tradition for children of rich Parsi merchants during the 15th century, after having parted with Iranian Zoroastrians geographically. Therefore, the Navjote is not a Zoroastrian ritual but rather a Parsi custom. In that sense, the orthodox tension is not irrelevant.
However, when the orthodox maintains their attitude for a Navjote, they come up with a reason from the history of Zoroastrianism from Achaemenes to Sassanian. Even for the reformist who accuses the orthodox affirmation of being an anachronism, they use the same reason. Their historical perspective derives from the ancient history of Zoroastrianism and the era of the British raj. They do not devote attention to the era after the demolition of Sassanian and before the British raj. Therefore, their affirmation is irrelevant.
From the floor, researchers and scholars posed questions related to the counterplot of Parsi population diminishment. Dr. Sugimoto, as a commentator, lent a new perspective to me about the abusiveness of a minority.

5.Yoko Taguchi

Indian “civil society” movements, especially those involving urban middle classes, have attracted media and research attention during the last few decades. This kind of movement has been criticized as representing a new consumerist middle class selfishly claiming their own desires at the expense of poor people. The urban activists indeed uphold individual merit and apparently work for their own benefit.
In my fieldwork in Mumbai, however, I was more intrigued by the activists’ particular interests and somewhat contradictory approach to themselves. These Mumbai activists’ core value was “integrity,” emphasizing honesty, wholeness, and undividedness. In pursuit of this ideal of individual citizenship, however, they produce the repeatedly re-appearing contradictory figure of the relationally defined dividual, created through the transaction of substance-codes. This paper presents analyses of this complex movement through an examination of two concepts of dividuality. One concept relates to the thesis of a general psychologization and technologization of contemporary society, which renders people as fragmented data. This description, however, does not fit with the narratives of Mumbai activists, who reported personal “satisfaction” as their motivation, but in partial association with the idioms of the karmic code. Here, the logic of psychologization (e.g., doing social work to gain satisfaction) and the logic of karma (having to do one’s work without being able to control its effects) both worked in support of civic duty. Therefore, to elucidate the making of citizens, the dividualization of contemporary society must be complemented with the dividual constructed through the movements of substance-codes.
I analyzed the use of psychometric tests by Mumbai’s citizen campaign organization in selecting suitable political candidates to illustrate the paradoxical manner in which individual citizens are pursued by partial connections across different forms of dividuals. The device of psychometrics was important for evaluating citizens as independent individuals, who were uncovered through the integration of pure inner data, without consideration of their external relations such as religion, caste, or family background. This was how the dividuals of psychologization and technologization played out. However, when the test takers were actually evaluated by a psychometrics trainer in this case, their data were interpreted through the concept of unchangeable “culture” and the relations that created the person. Therefore, another kind of dividual appeared in the test results.
The global logic of citizens is indeed important for contemporary Mumbai activism. Nevertheless, it is neither that the universal civic logic overtakes the Indian logic nor that the latter absorbs the former. Instead, new interpretations and practices are explored in the movements and connections of substances and codes.